"Pusillanimity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Duke of Orleans, was "the most cowardly prince of whom history makes mention." A strong expression, but perhaps safe. Holding the most powerful position in the nation, he never came upon the scene but to commit some new act of ingenious pusillanimity; while, by some extraordinary chance, every woman of his immediate kindred was a natural heroine, and became more heroic through disgust at him. His wife was Marguerite of Lorraine, who originated the first Fronde insurrection; his daughter turned the scale of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... have acknowledged such holiday missiles with showers of brickbats, and eggs not filled with aromatic dew. What was the result? The Tories increased in confidence and strength with every new assault; whilst the battered Whigs, from their sheer pusillanimity, became noisome in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... counsels of philosophy and the injunctions of religion, than those which are complicated with an opinion of dignity; and which we cannot dismiss without leaving in the hands of opposition some advantage iniquitously obtained, or suffering from our own prejudices some imputation of pusillanimity. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... alone that he ought to hope, without putting any confidence in his own exertions, and this thought filled him with interior joy, and raised his depressed spirits. Reproaching himself, therefore, with his pusillanimity, he left his cavern and went straight to the town, as a soldier, who, feeling ashamed of having fled, returns intrepidly to the charge. Of what is not he capable, who is fully persuaded that he can do nothing of himself towards his salvation, ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... accounts, we have observed that they did not always entirely agree; but we have taken those facts which had the most witnesses in their favour. We shall be sometimes obliged to record cruel truths; they will, however, be directed only to those, whose unskilfulness, or pusillanimity have caused these dreadful events. We venture to affirm, that the numerous observations, which we have collected, will give to our work all the accuracy rigorously required in so interesting ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... having only reason on my side, and being opposed by a triple-headed monster, that shod the baneful influence of avarice, prejudice, and pusillanimity in all our assemblies. It was some consolation to me, however, to find that philosophy and truth had made some little progress since my last effort, as I obtained twice as many ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... of fear.] Cowardice. — N. cowardice, pusillanimity; cowardliness &c. adj.; timidity, effeminacy. poltroonery, baseness; dastardness[obs3], dastardy[obs3]; abject fear, funk; Dutch courage; fear &c. 860; white feather, faint heart; cold feet * [U. S.], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... too, when every benefit from such destruction would inure to the South. Under the circumstances his course was taken: he dared not consult or trust Mr. Clay with the real motives which influenced him to yield, and made a virtue of patriotism and magnanimity which cloaked his pusillanimity, and shielded from public view ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... times already he had allowed a good book to slip through his fingers; the authors had come and gone a score of times while he hesitated, and could not make up his mind to buy the manuscript. When reproached for his pusillanimity, he was wont to produce the account of a notorious trial taken from the newspapers; it cost him nothing, and had brought him in ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... reduce that natural power and superiority at sea, which the English exercise with so much insolence, and the sinews of which are derived from America by their usurpation and tyranny; and yet, such is the pusillanimity of the times, the States are crouching to the English, and in effect aiding them in confirming that tyranny and those advantages. It is astonishing, that the smallest power in Europe should fear Great Britain, at a time when she is ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... before dawn on the following day, he witnessed the striking of the tents, which he thought too like a prelude to a shameful flight from the enemy. While he was standing by the busy people, and musing on the nice line which divides prudence from pusillanimity, his grandfather came up, and bade him mount his horse, telling him that, owing to the unhealed state of his wound, he was removed from the vanguard, and ordered to march in the centre, along with the prince. Thaddeus remonstrated against this arrangement, and almost ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... he have been honoured (may it be no offence to suppose it) with such grave and right reverend auditors. In the ludicrous distresses, which by the laws of comedy, Folly is often involved in; he sunk into such a mixture of piteous pusillanimity, and a consternation so ruefully ridiculous and inconsolable, that when he had shook you, to a fatigue of laughter, it became a moot point, whether you ought not to have pitied him. When he debated any matter by himself, he would shut up his mouth ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... the only thing he could do which was worth doing, always supposing that there is any merit in being able to write. He was of a mean appearance, and, like his father, pusillanimous to a degree. The meanness of his appearance disgusted, and his pusillanimity discouraged the Scotch when he made his appearance amongst them in the year 1715, some time after the standard of rebellion had been hoisted by Mar. He only stayed a short time in Scotland, and then, seized with panic, retreated to France, leaving his ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... is neither to be discussed nor thought of. I refer to it but to denounce it—a denunciation which will find a response in every American bosom. Nothing is ever gained by national pusillanimity. The country which seeks to purchase temporary security by yielding to unjust pretensions, buys present ease at the expense of permanent honour and safety. It sows the wind to reap the whirlwind. I have said elsewhere what I repeat here, that it is better to ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... is necessity in the use of this rod. "Every child," says Dr. South, "has some brute in it, and some man in it, and just in proportion to the brute we must whip it." When thus necessary we should not shrink from this kind of correction. "It is pusillanimity, as well as folly, to shrink from the crushing of the egg, but to wait composedly for the hatching of the viper." Yet, on the other hand, in the language of Dr. Bell, "a maximum of attainment can be made only by ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... days a mere necessity of school-boy life at public schools; and hence the superior manliness, generosity, and self-control, of those generally who benefited by such discipline—so systematically hostile to all meanness, pusillanimity, or indirectness. Cowper, in his poem on that subject, is far from doing justice to our great public schools. Himself disqualified, by delicacy of temperament, for reaping the benefits from such a warfare, and having suffered too ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... storms, are they tossed! for now at one time, as the wind driveth them, they are carried away headlong in error; at another time, coming again to themselves, they are beaten back like contrary waves; sometime with rash presumption they allow such things as seem uncertain, at another time of pusillanimity they are in fear even about those things which are certain; doubtful which way to take, which way to return, what to desire, what to avoid, what to hold, what to let go; which misery and affliction of a wavering and unsettled heart, were they wise, is as a medicine ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... does not concern us in the least. We approve of the project and will see that it is carried out. We have spent a good deal of money arming ourselves; and we are not going to have that money thrown away through the pusillanimity of a ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... of zeal. For though I did not share the toils or perils of the war I was engaged in a service not less hazardous to myself and more beneficial to my fellow citizens; nor in the adverse turns of our affairs, did I ever betray any symptoms of pusillanimity and dejection; or show myself more afraid than became me of malice or of death: For since from my youth I was devoted to the pursuits of literature, and my mind has always been stronger than my body, I did not court the labours of a camp, in which any common person would have been of more service ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... is a terrible misfortune—despair. This must not be confounded with an involuntary perturbation, a mere instinctive dread, a phantasmagoric illusion that involves no part of the will. It is not even an excessive fear that goes by the name of pusillanimity. It is a cool judgment like that of Cain: "My sin is too great that ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... as on others, the memory of M. Cuvier has been unjustly treated. He has been accused of pusillanimity and servile ambition. The charge indicates little knowledge of human nature, and insults a man of genius on very slight grounds. I lived much with M. Cuvier. Firmness in mind and action was not his most ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... settlement would be made between the two new fragments for all the property stored in the arsenal. Of course it was Haskins's duty to have defended his post to the death; but up to that time the national authorities in Washington had shown such pusillanimity, that the officers of the army knew not what to do. The result, anyhow, was that Haskins surrendered his post, and at once embarked for St. Louis. The arms and munitions stored in the arsenal were scattered—some to Mississippi, some to New Orleans, some to Shreveport; and to me, ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... scheme for raising the financial wind was to employ her pen. It was true that her "memoirs," strung together in Paris, had fallen flat—owing to the pusillanimity of the editor of Le Pays—but a full length "autobiography" would, she thought, stand a better prospect. Apart, too, from other considerations, there was now more material on which to draw. An embarrassing ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... consider further with what masterful force he rebuked timid or untrustworthy friends who would have abandoned the contest and consented to the independence of the seceding States, in the vain hope that time might aid in the recovery of that which by pusillanimity had been lost; with what serenity of manner he put aside the suggestion of Mr. Seward that war should be declared against France and Spain as a means of quieting domestic difficulties which were even then represented by contending armies; with what ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... on the arena, embraced and encouraged one another to endurance in view of torture and death. At this deep indignation and resentment seized the hearts of the multitude. Some reproached the Christians with cowardice and pusillanimity; others asserted that they refused to fight through hatred of the people, so as to deprive them of that pleasure which the sight of bravery produces. Finally, at command of Caesar, real gladiators were let out, who despatched in one twinkle ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... pusillanimity, such time-serving, he—Reginald Sawyer—scorned to be guilty. The higher placed the sinner, the more heinous the sin.—He would deal faithfully with all, since not only was the salvation of each one in jeopardy, but his own salvation was in peril likewise, inasmuch ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... and with the spring the two armies again took the field. The campaign of 1803 was, like its predecessor, marred by the pusillanimity and indecision of the Dutch deputies, who thwarted all Marlborough's schemes for bringing the French to a general engagement, and so ruined the English general's most skillful plans, that the earl, worn out by disappointment and disgust, wrote to the Queen, ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... give the Vizier the liberty of acting on the principles by us already admitted; that it is dexterously constructed to balance the desires of one man, rapacious and profuse, against the fears of another, described as "of extreme pusillanimity and wealthy," but that, whatever may have been the secret objects of the artifice and intrigue confessed to form its very essence, it must on the very face of it necessarily implicate the Company in a ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... had sustained a long succession of defeats and disgraces, unredeemed by a single brilliant achievement. It was the fashion, both in England and on the Continent, to ascribe those defeats and disgraces to the pusillanimity of the Irish race, [433] That this was a great error is sufficiently proved by the history of every war which has been carried on in any part of Christendom during five generations. The raw material out of which a good army ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... passions, that is not mentally on a level with its good fortune, England was drifting into foreign complications. A paralyzed Minister proclaimed it. The governing people, which is looked to for direction in grave dilemmas by its representatives and reflectors, shouted that it had been accused of pusillanimity. No one had any desire for war, only we really had (and it was perfectly true) been talking gigantic nonsense of peace, and of the everlastingness of the exchange of fruits for money, with angels waving raw-groceries ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... with them on horseback through the desert, and had found that privilege gave him an inestimable advantage over Mr. Cruse. Why should it not also suffice as regarded this new comer? He had held much commune with himself on the subject that morning; had called himself to task for his own pusillanimity, and had then fortified his courage with the old reflection about fair ladies and faint hearts—and also with a glass of brandy. He was therefore disposed to make himself very unpleasant to poor George ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... very well know, understand their rights and will defend them, and if they find the government will not protect them, they will attempt at least to protect themselves;" and he concluded, "I cannot be thankful to that gentleman for coming all the way from Geneva to give Americans a character for pusillanimity." He held it madness to suppose that if the treaty were defeated war could be avoided. Called to order, he said that he might have been too personal, and asked pardon of the gentleman and ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... inhabitants of towns which have undergone a cruel siege, and experienced all the horrors of storm and pillage, have retained for ages the traces of the effects of their sufferings, in a detestation of war, indications of pusillanimity, and decline of trade. If there be any truth in this observation, what caitiffs must the inhabitants of Berwick be! No town in the world has been so often exposed to the "ills that wait on the red chariot of war;" for Picts, Romans, Danes, Saxons, English, and Scotch ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... was fine, and with infantile pusillanimity she began to hope that Uncle Meshach would be taking his walks abroad. In order to give him every chance of being out she delayed her departure, upon one domestic excuse or another, for quite half an hour. 'How ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... they returned such an answer as was recommended by the Cornet, they would deserve to be handed down to posterity as poltroons and cowards. He would, he said, go still further; they would not only deserve to be thus branded with infamy, but they would actually be so; and their pusillanimity would be a taint in the blood of their children's children. He begged, he prayed, he intreated, he implored that they would not disgrace the name of man by conduct at once so cowardly and so foolish. ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... been on deck about an hour, and had been talking with Hillebrant upon the danger of the evening, and the selfishness and pusillanimity of Mynheer Von Stroom, when a loud noise ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... aware, that I could not bring myself to make any loud noise within his hearing. Yet I had not the courage to retreat. All my hope of relief from the many difficulties that menaced me lay in the generosity of this great-hearted woman, and if out of pusillanimity I let this hour go by without making my appeal, nothing but shame and disaster awaited me. Yet how could I hope to lure her down-stairs without noise? I could not, and so, yielding to the impulse of the moment, without any realisation, I here swear, of the effect which my unexpected ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... the people of Great Britain against their will. Hesitation to make use of this dictatorial authority, should he ever obtain it, will to himself mean political ruin; to his English supporters it will seem political pusillanimity; by his Irish confederates it will be denounced as breach of faith and treachery. As certainly as night follows day the passing of the Parliament Act will be succeeded by the attempted passing of ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... Intrigue with some Court Beauty. This unbecoming Wish was pretended to proceed from a Regard for the Welfare and Glory of the Nation. What, says they, shall our King always be tutor'd by Mollaks? What signifies this Peace, which is only owing to the Weakness and Pusillanimity of this set of Men, for we are oppressed with Taxes as much as if we were engaged in a War with all the Powers of Africa? Why does not our King shew some Spirit, and give into an Intrigue? An ambitious Mistress would break ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... that little which is done; for I profess I have taken care to master my pen, that I might not err ANIMO, {69} or of set purpose discolour each or any of the parts thereof, otherwise than in concealment. Haply there are some who will not approve of this modesty, but will censure it for pusillanimity, and, with the cunning artist, attempt to draw their line further out at length, and upon this of mine, which way (with somewhat more ease) it may be effected; for that the frame is ready made to their hands, and then haply I could draw one in the midst of theirs, but that modesty ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... sent in his place, alleging for it only the old reason of the mutability of fortune, as if she would be weary of long favoring the same person. With this language many did begin to feel offended; it seemed to be morosity and ill-will, the pusillanimity of old age, or a fear, that had now become exaggerated, of the skill of Hannibal. Nay, when Hannibal had put his army on shipboard, and taken his leave of Italy, Fabius still could not forbear to oppose and disturb the universal joy of Rome, expressing his fears and apprehensions, telling ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... nursery my literary labours are carried on under the greatest difficulties and hampered by constant interruptions from my nurse, a vulgar woman with a limited vocabulary and no aspirates. I say nothing, though I might say much, of the jealousy of adult authors, the pusillanimity of unenterprising publishers, the senile indifference of Parliament. But I warn them that, unless the just claims of youth to economic and intellectual independence are speedily acknowledged, the children of England will enforce them by direct action of the most ruthless kind. The brain that rules ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... more curious as to its form of expression than suspicious as to its meaning and motive. To all who know with what pusillanimity at times the First King shrank from the approach of Christian foreigners,—especially the French priests,—with what servility in his moody way he courted their favor, it will appear of very doubtful sincerity. To those ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... dietetics, to which the former are a farce. They thought of no exercises but Latin; they gave him a Gradus instead of a cricket-bat, until his mind became too keen for its mortal coil, and the foundation was laid for ill health, derangement of stomach, moral pusillanimity, irresolution, lowness of spirits, and all the Protean miseries of nervous disorders, by which his after life was haunted, and which are sadly depicted in almost every ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... spleen, midriff, or all the misaffected parts together, it boots not, they keep the mind in a perpetual dungeon, and oppress it with continual fears, anxieties, sorrows, &c. It is an ordinary thing for such as are sound to laugh at this dejected pusillanimity, and those other symptoms of melancholy, to make themselves merry with them, and to wonder at such, as toys and trifles, which may be resisted and withstood, if they will themselves: but let him that so wonders, consider with himself, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... "that suggestion does you little credit and appeals neither to the Raffles nor to the Holmes in me. Pusillanimity was a word which neither of my forebears could ever learn to use. It was too long, for one thing, and besides that it was never ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... Nobles, artisans, peasants, even priests, enrolled their names; and to decline this meritorious service was branded with the reproach of impiety, or, what perhaps was esteemed still more disgraceful, of cowardice and pusillanimity. The infirm and aged contributed to the expedition by presents and money; and many of them, not satisfied with the merit of this atonement, attended it in person, and were determined, if possible, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... quite so," I interrupted in some astonishment. "I admit that. Yet that is not the question." Whereupon I related to him in detail the incident of two days ago. I spoke of Polina's outburst, of my encounter with the Baron, of my dismissal, of the General's extraordinary pusillanimity, and of the call which De Griers had that morning paid me. In conclusion, I showed Astley the note which I ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... prosperous city, had it not been for the incursions of the Normands, who in the ninth century entered Paris, burnt some of the churches, and meeting with scarcely any resistance, made themselves masters of all they could find, whilst the Emperor Charles the Bald, at the head of an army, had the pusillanimity to treat with them, and finally to give them seven thousand pounds of silver to quit Paris, which was only an encouragement for them to return, which they did in a few years after, carrying devastation ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... which removes, even from cowardice itself, the sting of ignominy;-for surely that courage may easily be dispensed with, which would rather excite disgust than admiration! Indeed, it is the peculiar privilege of an author, to rob terror of contempt, and pusillanimity of reproach. ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... was a consequence of Adam's sin and was annulled by Christ's sacrifice. Since that time men have died only because of an obstinate habit of dying formed for many generations. For his part, he has the independence and resolution to withstand the universal pusillanimity and to refuse to die. He has discovered "an engine in Divinity to convey man from earth to heaven." He will "play a trump on death and show himself a match for ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... hand as that of R. L. Stevenson, has preferred to leave the task unattempted. There are in fact writers as to whom we make out that their refuge from this is to assume it to be not worth their attempting; by which pusillanimity in truth their honour is scantly saved. It is never an attestation of a value, or even of our imperfect sense of one, it is never a tribute to any truth at all, that we shall represent that value badly. It never makes up, artistically, for an artist's dim feeling about a ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... paternal friend, and behold your wishes, your prognostications fulfilled; come and behold happiness and inexpressible gratitude living in the bosom which so long was closed even to hope. Come, and receive my contrition for my pusillanimity, for my murmurings; come and help me to be thankful! I long to tell you orally how much is changed within me; how a thousand germs of life and gladness, which I believed to be dead, now spring up in my soul restored ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... in it." Jefferson, whose own account this is, did not mention that he raised any objection to the wording of the proclamation at the time, though a few months later he referred to it in his private correspondence as a piece of "pusillanimity," because it omitted any expression of the affection of America for France. The proclamation was issued on April 22, two weeks after the arrival of Genet at Charleston. The procedure that had been adopted ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... blasphemous and in favour of tyranny. In setting out for France she had broken the commandment to honour father and mother, she had given an occasion for scandal, she had committed blasphemy and had fallen from the faith. In the leap from Beaurevoir, she had displayed a pusillanimity bordering on despair and homicide; and, moreover, it had caused her to utter rash statements touching the remission of her sin and erroneous pronouncements concerning free will. By proclaiming her confidence in her salvation, she uttered presumptuous and pernicious ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... Should Frederic Chilton receive that letter, in less than a week—in three days, perhaps, for he was a man prompt to resolve and to do—he would present himself at Ridgeley to speak in his own behalf—an event Rosa considered eminently undesirable. Certainly Mabel's pusillanimity merited no such reward. She had no right to question the rectitude that one she professed to love, nor her aunt the right to act as mediator. If Mabel Aylett, with her found sense and judgment, and her inherent strength ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... Pyr. What! will I brave thee? ay, and beard thee too; A Roman spirit scorns to bear a brain So full of base pusillanimity. ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... stood, waiting. Who sighing beholds her? No pusillanimity there; but on the very heights of danger, which none other than the bravest could have gained, dauntless and safe, let her stand and fight her battle. So strong, yet so defenceless, so conspicuous for purpose and position there, the arrows rain upon her, —yet not one is poisoned ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... brought the question to the decision of war was the habit of concession on the part of the North, and the inability of its representatives to say No, when policy as well as conscience made it imperative. Without that confidence in Northern pusillanimity into which the South had been educated by their long experience of this weakness, whatever might have been the secret wish of the leading plotters, they would never have dared to rush their fellow-citizens into a position where ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... ignorant, and accustomed, from the state of the country, to hear of bloodshed and murders little less atrocious committed by the soldiery, and neither punished nor severely condemned, felt ashamed of his own pusillanimity—for such his ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... insure the delay which his brother had possibly planned to gain in some more reprehensible manner. And I had yielded to my fears and let his will have its way. I hated myself as I considered my own weakness. I could find no excuse either for my pusillanimity or for that procrastination of my duty into which it had betrayed me. I found I could not face my own scorn; and, rising from my study- chair, I took my hat and went out. I had determined to make amends for my fault by going at once ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... himself, who subsequently attacked so strongly the "pusillanimity" of the Administration's course, said on ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... opportunity to try for it: and, ordering the main-top-sail to be instantly laid to the mast, the French frigate no sooner beheld them thus bringing to, to engage, than it suddenly tacked, and bore away to rejoin it's consorts. The ascription of this French pusillanimity, to Captain Salter's gallant chastisement of the Amazon, on a similar occasion, is a very refined compliment to that deserving officer, and an admirable specimen of Captain Nelson's excessive candour and humility; while the acknowledgment that he had, "in other respects, been very fortunate," ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... this with satisfaction, accounting the city well served for having yielded herself up like a strumpet. It is a comment more picturesque than just, for obviously Forli did not surrender through pusillanimity, but to the end that it might be delivered from the ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... me no buts," he went on with a winning smile, remembering that geniality is essential in addressing a country audience, "and butter me no butter, for in future we shall require to grow our margarine as well. Let us, in a word, put behind us all prejudice and pusillanimity till we see this country of ours once more blooming like one great cornfield, covered with cows. Sirs, I am no iconoclast; let us do all this without departing in any way from those great principles of Free Trade, Industrialism, and Individual Liberty which have made our towns the largest, most ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... hands, and when finally the Turkish fleet sailed triumphantly into the Gulf of Patras, where it was protected by the Sultan's artillery at Lepanto, the Grand Prior of Auvergne, who commanded the French squadron, sailed away in disgust at the pusillanimity of his colleague. Lepanto fell, August 28th; and Grimani was imprisoned, nominally for life, for his blundering: nevertheless, after twenty-one years he was ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... Montagu and Northumberland, severely rebuking the former for his supineness, and ordering him to march in all haste to attack Edward in the rear. The earl's activity, promptitude, all-provident generalship, form a mournful contrast to the errors, the pusillanimity, and the treachery of others, which hitherto, as we have seen, made all his wisest schemes abortive. Despite Clarence's sullenness, Warwick had discovered no reason, as yet, to doubt his good faith. The oath he had taken—not only to Henry in London, but to Warwick at Amboise—had ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... said, could be taken where they came but for a dream. Now for our travelling from hence into parts abroad, our lawgiver thought fit altogether to restrain it. So is it not in China. For the Chinese sail where they will, or can; which showeth, that their law of keeping out strangers is a law of pusillanimity and fear. But this restraint of ours hath one only exception, which is admirable; preserving the good which cometh by communicating with strangers, and avoiding the hurt: and I will now open it to you. And ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... abroad. It was refused. Then he took his son with him, and for three whole years he roamed over Russia, from one doctor to another, incessantly journeying from town to town and driving the physicians, his son, his servants, to despair by his pusillanimity and impatience. He returned to Lavriki a perfect rag, a tearful and capricious child. Bitter days ensued, every one endured much at his hands. Ivan Petrovitch calmed down only while he was eating his dinner; he had never eaten ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... waited for him that saved me from pusillanimity and a storm. He who believes himself to be far advanced in the ways of God has not yet ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... said Don Estevan, smiling inwardly at the contrast exhibited between the spirit of the haciendado and the pusillanimity of the Senator. "Be calm! the enemy I speak of is no longer under your roof— he has fled beyond the reach ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... "By damn! you've upset your basket—you have, for a fact. Here, let's pick um up." He and Old Grannis went up and down the flight, gathering up the fish, the lentils, and the sadly battered cabbage. Marcus was raging over the pusillanimity of Alexander, of which Maria ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... great Pusillanimity, blush to give you this Anxiety, did not I opine you were as gracious as communicative and eminent; and though you have no Cognisance of me, your humble Servant,—yet I have of you,—you being so gravely fam'd for your admirable Skill both in Galenical and Paracelsian Phaenomena's, and other approv'd ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... which has sunk down on me like a benumbing torpor; but if thou hast remembered by what visions my couch was haunted, and dost but think of the probability that I am in the vicinity, perhaps under the same roof with G.M., thou wilt acknowledge that other feelings than pusillanimity have tended in some degree to ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... of Ministers, and were continuing to play the same double game which had brought ruin on the first National Assembly and disaster upon the Russian people. They were members of the same futile crowd of useless charlatans who by their pusillanimity had made their country a byword and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk possible. I was in a position to judge. I was certain that this young man was the wrong sort to allow the execution of his chief to pass without ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... scenes and that magnificent architecture remained. The heaven over-canopied the head of Edwin. The clouds were dissipated. The light of innumerable stars gave grandeur to the scene. And the silver moon communicated a milder lustre, and created a softer shade. Roderic and his train, full of pusillanimity and consternation, had fled from the direful scene, and vanished like shadows at the ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... deformed man of low stature; the projection on his back might be styled a hump—it was so prominent. His physiognomy denoted pusillanimity; but there was, at the same time, a malicious sparkle in his eye, and it was with a mocking smile that he contemplated the ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... seemed broken. He stopped also; looked at me in some surprise; made a remark that I 'did not appear to be well,' and passed on. I looked after him, sick at heart with revenge deferred, and cursed my own pusillanimity. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... was felt by the thoughtful that such victories, at such a crisis of general prostration, were not more beneficial to ourselves than finally to France, our enemy, and to the nations of all western or central Europe, through whose pusillanimity it was that ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... they, after the Disgrace they had suffer'd, and which they deservedly had brought on themselves, hope ever to be admitted into the Company of brave Men, were they exempted from the Slavery to which their Pusillanimity had condemn'd 'em. After this they were sold to the best Bidder. I remember, he who was sold at the greatest Price, brought no more than Two Dozen of Fowls and a Kid, to be paid the next publick Festival. The Scout who had not given timely Advice of the Enemy's Approach, was next brought ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... hardy characters, abruptness is looked upon as frankness, rudeness as force, haughtiness as true nobility; and that the delicacy and graces which some officers bring with them from the salons are in their eyes no better than weakness and pusillanimity; that these appear to them like a foreign language, which they do not understand, and the accents of which strike ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... he betrayed pusillanimity at the hour of death; and that, to save himself from punishment, he (397) accused his mother of being involved in the conspiracy. This circumstance, however, is not mentioned by other writers, who relate, on the contrary, that he died with philosophical fortitude. He was then only in the twenty-sixth ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... Cuzco, at a place called Paccari-tampu, there were four men with their four sisters, of fierce courage and evil intentions, although with lofty aims. These, being more able than the others, understood the pusillanimity of the natives of those districts and the ease with which they could be made to believe anything that was propounded with authority or with any force. So they conceived among themselves the idea of being able to subjugate many lands by force and deception. Thus all the eight brethren, ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... posterity is, not that the battle of the Boyne should have been lost by the Irish, but that they should ever have attempted to fight at all. Perhaps nothing but the inherent loyalty of the Irish, which neither treachery nor pusillanimity could destroy, and the vivid remembrance of the cruel wrongs always inflicted by Protestants when in power, prevented them from rushing over en masse to William's side of the Boyne. Perhaps, in the history of nations, there never was so brave a resistance made ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... false Burgundy, some say with the Regent Bedford himself. They cared not to save France. They cared only to keep out of harm's way—to avoid all peril and danger, and to thwart the Maid, whose patriotism and lofty courage was such a foil to their pusillanimity and cowardice. ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... superstition, inflexible discipline, and the hopes of reward. The peace establishment of the Roman army numbered some 375,000 men, divided into thirty legions, who were confined, not within the walls of fortified cities, which the Romans considered as the refuge of pusillanimity, but upon the confines of the empire; while 20,000 chosen soldiers, distinguished by the titles of City Cohorts and Praetorian Guards, watched over the safety of the monarch and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... most of us had foreseen, and was accompanied by alternative proposals which placed Joubert in the position of a potential conqueror—dictating terms, and our acceptance of these cannot be read by the Boers in any other light than as an admission of weakness or pusillanimity. Of course we know that it means nothing of the kind, but simply that Sir George White would not expose sick and wounded, with helpless women, children, and non-combatants generally, to the possible horrors of a prolonged bombardment. So long as they remained in town ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... complaining that they are like to be so: but when a single man comes forward to brave their cries and to make them submit to the last indignities, from mere pride and self-will, our admiration of his prowess is immediately converted into contempt for their pusillanimity. The insolence of power is stronger than the plea of necessity. The tame submission to usurped authority or even the natural resistance to it has nothing to excite or flatter the imagination: it is the assumption of a right to insult or oppress others that carries an imposing air ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... of the lady appears on the scene, sometimes as a supplicant, and at others as a consenting party to the inevitable marriage, but never is he depicted as resorting to force to rescue his daughter. This pusillanimity can only be reasonably accounted for by supposing that the "little man" was physically incapable of encountering and overcoming by brute force the aspirant to the hand of his daughter. From this conduct we must, I think, infer that ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... as yet, the people are the sovereigns of the United States. Too much complacency is an injury done to his cause; for, as every advantage is already taken of France (not by the people), further condescension may lead to further abuse. If one of the leading features of our government is pusillanimity, when the British lion shows his teeth, let France and her minister act as becomes the dignity of their cause, and the ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... the nation, justly proud of its triumphs, disdained to listen to the whispers of a party, who murmured defeat with victory before their eyes; who conjured up visions of ruin, only to be rebuked by realities of triumph; and to whom the national scorn of pusillanimity, and the national rejoicing in the proudest success, could not unteach the language of despair. Perceval, the overthrower of the Foxite ministry, perished; but the political system of the cabinet remained unchanged. Castlereaghperished—Liverpool perished; but the political system still remained. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... sound discretion I decided on falling back. The feeling which would have led me onwards was similar to that of a man who is sensible of having committed an error, yet is ashamed to make an apology, and who would rather run the risk of being shot, than of having the charge of pusillanimity fixed upon him; but I have never regretted the step I took, and it has been no small gratification to me to find that the Noble President of the Royal Geographical Society, Lord Colchester, when addressing the members of that enlightened ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... Secretary in war might be present at the greatest secret of danger; but withal alleged seriously, that it concerned him to be more active in enterprises of hazard than other men, that all might see that his impatiency for peace proceeded not from pusillanimity or fear to adventure ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... not to say the pusillanimity of Philip, prevented him from seizing the golden fruits of his triumph. Ferdinand Gonzaga wished the blow to be followed up by an immediate march upon Paris.—Such was also the feeling of all the distinguished ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... cause, and the divine goodness as the sufficient reason; but an answer to the Whence and Why is no answer to the How, which alone is the physiologist's concern. It is a sophisma pigrum, and (as Bacon hath said) the arrogance of pusillanimity, which lifts up the idol of a mortal's fancy and commands us to fall down and worship it, as a work of divine wisdom, an ancile or palladium fallen from heaven. By the very same argument the supporters of the Ptolemaic system might have rebuffed the Newtonian, and pointing to the sky with ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of human nature led him to believe that even Annie would use him as a dark background for her heroism; and he well knew that when such a story is once started, society's strongest tendency is to exaggerate man's pusillanimity and woman's courage. He shuddered as he saw himself growing blacker and meaner in every fireside and street corner narration of the strange tale, till at last his infamy should pass into one of the traditions of the place. A man like Gregory could not long have endured such a prospect. ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... the dread of some evil which most persons do not usually fear, and therefore I do not ascribe it to the emotions of desire. I wished, notwithstanding, to explain it here, because in so far as we attend to desire, pusillanimity is the true opposite of ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... Ganlochan shortly afterward. The struggle continued with varying fortune between the northern and southern powers during the rest of the reign of Soutsong, and also during that of his successor, Taitsong the Second. This ruler showed himself unworthy of his name, abandoning his capital with great pusillanimity when a small Tibetan army advanced upon it. The census returns threw an expressive light on the condition of the empire during this period. Under Mingti the population was given at fifty- two million; in the time of the second Taitsong it had sunk to seventeen million. A great ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... finish his polemic against the sage of Ferney. To finish it? No, now was the time to begin it. A new one! A different one! One in which the ridiculous old fool should be shown up as he deserved: for his pusillanimity, his half-heartedness, his subservience. He an unbeliever? A man of whom the latest news was that he was on excellent terms with the priests, that he visited church, and on feast days actually went to ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... her greatest height, as she spoke them, and looking her aunt full in the face with something of defiance both in her eyes and in the tone of her voice. She had almost said, "Anton Trendellsohn, the Jew;" and when her speech was finished, and admitted of no addition, she reproached herself with pusillanimity in that she had omitted the word which had always been so odious, and would now be doubly odious—odious to her aunt in a ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... and the Northern conceptions of a dignified and reasonable way of life. The magnificence of the Homeric great man is like the magnificence of the Northern lord, in so far as both are equally marked off from the pusillanimity and cheapness of popular morality on the one hand, and from the ostentation of Oriental or chivalrous society on the other. The likeness here is not purely in the historical details, but much more in the spirit that ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... favourable to an alliance with a Farnese Pope as he was to a similar compact with the Medici. Charles could force his daughter to accept me, as he compelled her to marry Alessandro; but I will not win her in that way, and she despises me, doubtless, for what she considers my pusillanimity. ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... more than sunlight to make the Breton pirate blink. And those that crawled out after him—the remnants of his crew—cursed him horribly for the pusillanimity which had brought them into the ignominy of owing their deliverance to those whom they had deserted as lost ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... Doubtless they all were solicitous about the general good, but their love for it was so general and so diluted with attachment to others' goods as to be hardly discernible. The reproach that can hardly be spared to Mr. Wilson, however, is that of pusillanimity. If his faith in the principles he had laid down for the guidance of nations were as intense as his eloquent words suggested, he would have spurned the offer of a sequence of high-sounding phrases in lieu of a resettlement of the world. And his appeal to the peoples would most probably have been ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... soldiers to victory, gazed out straight before him, as if through the bare, white-washed walls of this humble hotel room he saw the vision of the brilliant halls of the Tuileries, the imperial throne, the Empress beside him, all her faithlessness and pusillanimity forgiven, his son whom he worshipped, his marshals grouped around him; and with a gesture of proud defiance he threw back his ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... Paine published a pamphlet in which he charged Washington with "encouraging and swallowing the greatest adulation," with being "the patron of fraud," with a "mean and servile submission to the insults of one nation, treachery and ingratitude to another," with "falsehood," "ingratitude," and "pusillanimity;" and finally, after alleging that the General had not "served America with more disinterestedness or greater zeal, than myself, and I know not if with better effect," Paine closed his attack by the assertion, "and as to you, sir, treacherous in private ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... virtues, faith and courage and devotion, grow like weeds upon the battle-field. The fighters recognize these virtues in each other, and the front lines, for all their mud and slaughter, are breathed on by the airs of heaven. Hate and pusillanimity have little there to nourish them. To find the meaner passions you must seek further back. Johnson, speaking in the Idler of the calamities produced by war, admits that he does not know 'whether more is to be dreaded from streets filled with soldiers accustomed to ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... thoughts, and transmitted to him and his companion the reproofs and encouragements which were supernaturally addressed to them through the medium of one of her visions, opened their eyes to a sense of their pusillanimity, and made ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... was at first exceedingly strong, and accompanied with its usual attendants of dejection and pusillanimity, my mind soon began, as it were mechanically, to turn upon the consideration of the distance between this sea-port and my county prison, and the various opportunities of escape that might offer themselves ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... the apparent pusillanimity of the Carthaginians, it is necessary to observe, that they had suffered repeated defeats in their war with Massinis'sa; and that fifty thousand of their troops, after having been blocked up in their camp till from ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... empty as the air. I dissimulated, I hesitated to announce my own belief, reflecting how far it were seasonable thus to contradict my companion, and persuading myself that it would be useless, and that I was perfectly justified in remaining silent. What vile pusillanimity! why thus respect the presumptuous power of popular errors and opinions, resting upon no foundation. True it is that an ill-timed zeal is always indiscreet, and calculated to irritate rather than convert; but to avow with frankness and modesty ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... celebrated, most ambitious, most self-complacent and most unsuccessful fille a marier in French history, passed in enforced retirement at the castle of Blois the close of a life of clumsy intrigues against Cardinal Richelieu, in which his rashness was only equalled by his pusillanimity and his ill-luck by his inaccessibility to correction, and which, after so many follies and shames, was properly summed up in the project—begun, but not completed—of demolishing the beautiful habitation of his exile in order to erect a ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... all their authority, could not prevail on the Indians to penetrate farther into the cavern. As the vault grew lower, the cries of the Guacharos became more shrill. We were obliged to yield to the pusillanimity of our guides, and trace back our steps. The appearance of the cavern was indeed very uniform. We find that a bishop of St. Thomas of Guiana had gone farther than ourselves. He had measured nearly two thousand five hundred feet from the mouth to the spot where he stopped, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... a sin is against an infinite, imperishable being, such as is the soul of man!" And yet, is this, and such as this, to be devoted to forgetfulness, and all be sacrificed, lest some friend, disdaining utility, should prefer flattery to truth? A concession to such advice would be treachery and pusillanimity combined, at which none would so exult as the spirits ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... Allah." Then Omar cast a terrible look at the accused youth and said to him, "Verily thou hearest the complaint these two young men prefer; what hast thou in reply to aver?" But he was brave of heart and bold of speech, having doffed the robe of pusillanimity and put off the garb of cowardry; so he smiled and spake in the most eloquent and elegant words; and, after paying the usual ceremonial compliments to the Caliph, said, ""By Allah, O Commander of the Faithful, I have indeed given ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... self-indulgence. I, a man who secretly prided himself on his self-control, nerve, and manliness,—who never flinched at hard fare or rough weather,—a downright slave to a bad habit; unnerved and actually unfit for business for lack of a cigar. It made me angry at myself; I despised myself for my pusillanimity. ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... equipped so magnificent a navy has surprised them, and does exceeding honour to my Lord Anson, who has breathed new life into our affairs. The minister himself has retained little or none of his brother's and of his own pusillanimity; and as the Duke(578) is got into the Regency, you may imagine our land-spirit will not be unquickened neither. This is our situation; actual news there is none. All we hear from France is, that a new-madness ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... exhorting me to take courage, and inviting me with more than exhortation to accomplish my deliverance. She came nearer, more tenderly, more earnestly; she held the dewy globe with both hands, leaning forward, and sighed and shook her head, drooping at my pusillanimity. It was only when a ringlet had touched the rim, and perhaps the water (for a sunbeam on the surface could never have given it such a golden hue), that I took courage, clasped it, and exhausted it. Sweet as was the ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... of Peking, and at any moment might arrive. Rebellion threatened in the city itself. If he went out boldly to attack the oncoming rebels his own troops might go over to the enemy, or deliver him into their hands; if he stayed in the city the people would naturally attribute it to pusillanimity, and probably open the ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... a History of Wine, which was actually commissioned, planned, and begun just before I was appointed to my Chair at Edinburgh, and which I gave up, not from any personal pusillanimity or loss of interest in the subject, but partly because I had too much else to do, and because I thought it unfair to expose that respectable institution to the venom of the most unscrupulous of all fanatics—those ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... general has nothing to suffer from these events, and, no doubt, has directed them. What Monk is now doing he has often done before. We are wrong in alarming ourselves; his absence will, doubtless, be of short duration; therefore, let us beware, lest by a pusillanimity which the general would consider a crime, of making his absence public, and by that means demoralize the army. The general gives a striking proof of his confidence in us; let us show ourselves worthy of it. Gentlemen, let the most profound silence cover all this with an impenetrable ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... resumed, was fiercely prosecuted. Henry III. remained most of the time in the gilded saloons of the Louvre, irritable and wretched, and yet incapable of any continued efficient exertion. Many of the zealous Leaguers, indignant at the pusillanimity he displayed, urged the Duke of Guise to dethrone Henry III. by violence, and openly to declare himself King of France. They assured him that the nation would sustain him by their arms. But the duke was not prepared to enter upon so bold a measure, as he hoped that the death of the king ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... the firmest courage and a degree of bodily strength which rendered that courage invincible. He affected, indeed, to despise the virtuous moderation of his friend, and ridiculed it with some of his looser comrades as an abject pusillanimity; but he felt himself humbled whenever he was in his company as before a superior being, and therefore gradually estranged himself from ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... room, with his handkerchief to his face. The marquis was really sorry for the blow, chiefly because Malcolm, without a shadow of pusillanimity, had taken it so quietly. Malcolm would, however, have had very much more the worse of it had he defended himself, for his master had been a bruiser in his youth, and neither his left hand nor his right arm had yet forgot their ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... opposed to the discussion of the subject; but, be it said to the honor of American Christians, the very large minority resisted to the end; the latter was sustained by outside opinion, and many friends of the Gospel joined with it in deploring the pusillanimity which yielded to the menaces of the South. A crisis thence arose, which has not yet reached its height, and the first fruits of which have been the foundation of a rival society in Boston, to which adherents are ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... definite, though a great many other things have been inconveniently vague. At the beginning of the year, when Parliament was opened in the queen's name, the royal speech contained a phrase which that boisterous organ of the war-party, the Pall Mall Gazette, pronounced "sickening" in its pusillanimity. Her Majesty alluded to the necessity, in view of the complications in the East, of the government taking into consideration the making of "preparations for precaution." This was certainly an ineffective way of expressing a thirst ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... experience of the complexity of human struggle, Catherine clung to her aim until the end. There was no touch of pusillanimity in her heroic spirit. As with deep respect we follow the Letters of the last two years, and note their unflagging alertness and vigour, their steady tone of devotion and self-control, we realise that to tragedy her spirit was dedicate. Her energy of mind was ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... sincere artists in the whole world—for some reason have up to this time passed over prostitution and the brothel. Why? Really, it is difficult for me to answer that. Perhaps because of squeamishness, perhaps out of pusillanimity, out of fear of being signalized as a pornographic writer; finally from the apprehension that our gossiping criticism will identify the artistic work of the writer with his personal life and will start rummaging ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... the rule. It was no effort now to decide to keep it. So he jumped into his flannels and took his beloved bat, and made a long score that morning against Wake's bowling, and was happy. Felgate mentally abused him for his pusillanimity, but saw no reason, for all that, for not turning the incident to account. He proclaimed poor Sherriffs wrongs to a few of ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... the Directory, which he accused of weakness, indecision, pusillanimity, wasteful expenditure, of many errors, and perseverance in a system degrading to the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... long fight and strenuous defence, Tenacity tremendous, toil immense, The garrison surrenders! 'Tis the doom Of desperate war; and though a sombre gloom Sits on each brow, each brow is lifted high, No petulant pusillanimity Makes poor this last parade of stout defenders, Or shames this most unwilling of surrenders. Six lingering years, and more, of hot attack, By confident cool valour beaten back! Six baffling years of sortie, and of sally, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 13, 1892 • Various
... partly by the misconduct of those who had the command of them. In the course of the campaign, two instances occurred which served to show how greatly courage is admired even in enemies, and how much cowardice and pusillanimity ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... the theatre of political commotions—Mutual enmity of the queen and the duke of Orleans, which, in the sequel, brought these great personages to the scaffold—Their improper example imitated by the nobility of both sexes—The projects of each defeated—The duke's pusillanimity was a bar to his ambition—He exhausted his immense fortune to gain partisans, and secure the attachment of the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... me? By burying me in an infamous dungeon and robbing me of my intended wife! No, not to avenge myself would be a crime, it would be encouraging them to new acts of injustice! No, it would be cowardice, pusillanimity, to groan and weep when there is blood and life left, when to insult and menace is added mockery. I will call out these ignorant people, I will make them see their misery. I will teach them to think not of brotherhood ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... his successors was composed of no less than thirty of these formidable brigades; and most probably formed a standing force of three hundred and seventy-five thousand men. Instead of being confined within the walls of fortified cities, which the Romans considered as the refuge of weakness or pusillanimity, the legions were encamped on the banks of the great rivers, and along the frontiers of the barbarians. As their stations, for the most part, remained fixed and permanent, we may venture to describe the distribution of the troops. Three legions were ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... abjured."—Ibid. (Extract from the minutes of the meetings of the Central committee of Montauban, April II, 1793, with the approval of the representative, Jeanbon-Saint-Andre.) "The moment has at length come when moderatism, royalism and pusillanimity, and all other traitorous or useless sects to the country, should disappear from the soil of Liberty." All opinions opposed to those of sans-culotterie ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... without seeing, how very slowly troops move on hillsides. It was eleven o'clock before the village was reached. The enemy fell back "sniping," and doing hardly any damage. Everybody condemned their pusillanimity in making off without a fight. Part of the village and some stacks of bhoosa, a kind of chopped straw, were set on fire, and the two companies prepared to return ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... in his nature than in that of his brother, more belief in the worth of his own people. The espionage, the servility, the overdone professions of sanctity in Manteuffel's regime displeased him, but most of ail he despised its pusillanimity in the conduct of foreign affairs. His heart indeed was Prussian, not German, and the destiny which created him the first Emperor of united Germany was not of his own making nor of his own seeking; ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... prematurely, and who loves where perhaps—he has as yet no certainty of it—he should not love; what more is needed to enable us to comprehend the arrogance displayed in the first catastrophe and the pusillanimity in the second? Kleist has put a set of pulleys in motion where the simplest lever would have sufficed, but the pulleys have been connected with the lever, and the purpose has been thoroughly accomplished, though not by the most direct, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... Robespierre recalls a more illustrious man; we think of Cicero tremblingly calling upon the Senate to decide for him whether he should order the execution of the Catilinarian conspirators. It is to be said, however, in his favour that he had the art, which Cicero lacked, to hide his pusillanimity. Robespierre knew himself, and did his best to keep ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... he should spend the rest of his days in misery and horror, and never see the light of God's sun, nor the face of a friend; but perish in a foreign land, far removed from his family and connexions. Pickle d—d him for his pusillanimity; and the exempt hearing a lady bemoan herself so piteously, expressed his mortification at being the instrument of giving her such pain, and endeavoured to console them by representing the lenity of the French government, and the singular generosity ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... Rhineland, and Italy galled French pride. Loud were the murmurs of the throngs of soldiers that came from the fortresses of Germany, or the prisons of Spain, Russia, and England—70,000 crossed over from our shores alone—at the harshness of the allies and the pusillanimity of the Bourbons. The return from war to peace is always hard; and now these gaunt warriors came back to a little France that perforce discharged them or placed them on half-pay. Perhaps they might have been won over by a tactful Court: but the Bourbons, especially that typical emigre, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... of this harvest, sown by others, were reaped by the czar. His people, who had been disgusted with his cowardice, now gave him credit for the deepest craft and wisdom. All this had been prepared by him, they said. His flight was a ruse, his pusillanimity was prudence; he had made the Tartars their own destroyers, without risking the fate of Russia in a battle; and what had just been condemned as dastard baseness was now ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... misrepresentation. Militant patriotism rejects it with scorn. It is said to involve an ignoble degree of truckling to foreign nations. It involves nothing of the kind. I should certainly be the last to recommend anything approaching to pusillanimity in the conduct of the foreign affairs of my country. If I thought that the introduction of a policy of Protection was really demanded in the interests of the inhabitants of the United Kingdom, I should warmly advocate it, whatever ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... MU}{GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA}{GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA}), it is longanimous or magnanimous and there is indeed no great, truly great, mind but is patient and long suffering. It is a great weakness and pusillanimity to be soon angry. Such a spirit hath not the rule of itself, but is in bondage to its own lust, but "he that ruleth his spirit is greater than he that taketh a city." Now, it is much of this affection ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... manner, refused me the satisfaction of a gentleman; he knows, moreover, that I am no stranger to his dastardly behaviour in this town, which I have recounted before, and he is unwilling that such a testimony of his ingratitude and pusillanimity should live upon the earth; for this reason he is guilty of the most infernal malice to bring about my ruin. And I am afraid, madam (turning to Mrs. Gawky) you have too easily entered into the sentiments of your husband. ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... word, elan ) to resist destruction. But at that time no one knew what the resistance was to cost, how long it would have to last, what sacrifices, material and moral, it would necessitate. And for the moment baser sentiments were silenced: greed, self-interest, pusillanimity seemed to have been purged from the race. The great sitting of the Chamber, that almost religious celebration of defensive union, really expressed the opinion of the whole people. It is fairly easy to soar to the empyrean when ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... the honour which you have conferred upon me, an honour of which the greatest men might well be proud, an honour which it is in the power only of a free people to bestow, has laid on me such an obligation that I should have thought it ingratitude, I should have thought it pusillanimity, not to make at least ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... are with her uncle;" quickly returned Alida. "I am so little of a sailor, that prudence, if not pusillanimity, teaches me to depend on the ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... to have nourished too violent a contempt for the king, on account of his pedantry and pusillanimity; and by that means struck in with the restless and martial spirit of the English nation. Had he lived, he had probably promoted the glory, perhaps not the felicity, of his people. The unhappy prepossession which men commonly entertain in favor of ambition, courage, enterprise, and other ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... Liberty—which could give any offence to the most devout person. His conformity, one need hardly say, never went beyond the negative degree, nor ever passed beyond the conformity of silence. That guilty and grievously common pusillanimity which leads men to make or act hypocritical professions, always moved his deepest abhorrence. And he did not fear publicly to testify his interest in the return of ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... straightforward man!" Mr. Hansombody exclaimed, turning round on the Meeting. "What I say is, are we to have pusillanimity in our first Parish Council? What I say is, that a gentleman who gives a working man such an answer to such ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... dynasty, and the incredible wealth of the ancient rulers of Peru. She appeared to be pretty intimately acquainted with the history of the conquest of the country by Pizarro, and had many bitter things to say of the strange pusillanimity of the Inca, Atahuallpa, on that fatal 16th of November, 1532, when he went, open- eyed, into the trap prepared for him at Caxamalca, and suffered himself to be seized, in the presence of his entire ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... should make every particular member of the community sensible of the public calamity, and ambitious of the honor of extirpating such a notorious highwayman from society, since he owes his long successes to no other cause than his immoderate impudence, and the sloth and pusillanimity of those who ought to bring him to justice.' I will not deny," continued Coates, "that, professing myself, as I do, to be a staunch new Whig, I had not some covert political object in penning this epistle.[22] Nevertheless, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... to his Majesty. Our appeals have been spurned. Our entreaties have been interpreted as the pleas of cowardice. Our patience has been regarded as pusillanimity. Because British oppression has been met by respectful remonstrance instead of indignant denunciation, it has appealed to arms; and that appeal must be promptly met by warlike preparations and the ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... to relent towards this tyrant, you will repent it when it shall be too late. His malice is fixed, and will not evaporate by any your mild courses. For he will ascribe the alteration to her Majesty's pusillanimity, and not to your good nature: knowing that you work but upon her humour, and not out of any love towards him. The less you make him, the less he shall be able to harm you and yours. And if her Majesty's favour fail him, he will again decline to a common person. For after revenges fear ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... dreaded, and generally only submitted to by compulsion; which Stephen, the learned bishop of Tourney, in 1179, observes to be the spirit and rule of the primitive church of Christ, (ser. 2.) Yet too obstinate a resistance may become a disobedience, an infraction of order and peace, a criminal pusillanimity, according to the just remark of St. Basil, Reg. disput. c. 21 Innocent III. ep. ad Episc. Calarit. Decret. l. ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... of love for my country. How have they responded to me? By burying me in an infamous prison and by prostituting my fiancee. No, not to avenge myself would be a crime. It would be encouraging them to commit new injustices. No! it would be cowardice, it would be pusillanimity to weep and groan while there is life and vigor, when to insult and challenge are added scoffery and contemptuous ridicule! I will arouse this ignorant people, I will make them see their misery—this people who do not think of each other as brothers, ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... to wrap round him, having lent his cloak to the King in the morning; and as it had been pouring all day, the ground could not have afforded very luxurious quarters. The same extraordinary luck which had attended the French in their whole expedition, now favoured their retreat; and the same pusillanimity which the allies had shown at Fornovo, prevented them from re-forming and engaging with the army of Charles upon the plain. One hour before daybreak on Tuesday morning, the French broke up their camp and succeeded ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... in the night's fear one great part is the fault of pusillanimity; that is, of faint and feeble stomach, by which a man for faint heart is afraid where he needeth not. By reason of this, he flieth oftentime for fear of something of which, if he fled not, he should ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... had no power over my life. To elude the storm of invective and upbraiding, to quiet the uproar of my mind, I did not betake myself to voluntary death. My pusillanimity still clung to this wretched existence. I abruptly retired from the scene, and, repairing to the port, embarked in the first vessel which appeared. The ship chanced to belong to Wilmington, in Delaware, and here I sought out ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... alone, in the Royalist camp, could rival him as a 'partisan soldier.' His first distinguished exploit was his defence of Prior's Hill fort, at the siege of Bristol—which contrasts so remarkably with the pusillanimity of his chief, Colonel Fiennes. Next comes his yet more brilliant defence of Lyme—then a little fishing-town, with some 900 inhabitants, of which the defences were a dry ditch, a few hastily-formed earth-works, and three small batteries, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... sailor-like complexion, and his head was bare to the storm and sunshine. He was a natural curiosity, a speculation to the scientific, a prodigy to the simple. The infant would stare at the mighty man brought down to his own level. The common cripple would despise his own pusillanimity, viewing the hale stoutness, and hearty heart, of this half-limbed giant. Few but must have noticed him; for the accident, which brought him low, took place during the riots of 1780, and he has been a groundling so long. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... fumes, sword in hand, at the pusillanimity of the Western sympathizers. They are rich and should be arming. Why do they not strike one effective blow for the cause? One gun would sink a lightly built Pacific liner, or bring its flag down. Millions of gold are being exported ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... they escaped conviction. Sheridan, not satisfied with eluding, determined to mock the justice of his country, and composed a Masque called 'The Foresters,' containing a circumstantial account of some of the robberies he had committed, and a good deal of sarcasm on the pusillanimity of those whom he had robbed, and the inefficacy of the penal laws of the kingdom. This piece was acted at Drury-Lane Theatre with great applause, to the astonishment of all sober persons, and the scandal of the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore |
